ChristophWaltz Tagged Articles at Cinematical

While watching Michael Mann's Heat, I discovered the "cup of coffee test" for screen villains. I found myself thinking again of that great scene in which the cop (Al Pacino) and the villain (Robert De Niro) sat down to share a cup of coffee. It was a simple gesture, with no chasing or guns or shooting. Just talking. But it demonstrated on a thematic and visual level that this hero and this villain were actually very close to one another. They were very similar people, with similar natures.

I started applying this test to almost every movie. Not surprisingly, most of them fall apart. Most movie villains simply sneer and cackle and try to take over the world. But think of Batman and the Joker in The Dark Knight. They don't literally have coffee together, but they do sit down together for a talk; the movie presents them as equals, and separate from the rest of the world. They understand one another better than anyone else. Consider, also, Col. Landa (Christoph Waltz) in Inglourious Basterds, who sits down several times with several heroes over several different kinds of beverages (ranging from milk to wine). He's snaky, but smart and always cordial.

Sometimes the rule gets a little gray. For example, Clint Eastwood and John Malkovich don't exactly stop for coffee in In the Line of Fire, but they do have a quick, revealing phone conversation in which it is established that they are kindred spirits. And it's unlikely that Clarice Starling would sit down for coffee with Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs -- mainly because he would probably use it to kill her -- but they do sit down and talk together.

And then, sometimes, all it takes to be a cool villain is a black mask and a respiratory problem. What do you think, dear readers? Do your favorite villains pass the "cup of coffee" test?

In what could be read as a big "nyah, told you so" press release, The Weinstein Company would like you all to know that Inglourious Basterds has not only grossed over $108M* in North America but has now out-earned Pulp Fiction, which was previously Tarantino's biggest money-maker to date.

But what's strange is that TWC is giving some of the credit to "an innovative marketing plan. The film was the first to make use of Twitter and other social networking sites in such a direct fashion, even involving Twitter in the film's LA premiere," according to the press release.

Harvey Weinstein is even quoted as saying, "It was great working with Biz Stone at Twitter on Inglourious. It took the campaign to another level."

Okay, what have I missed? How was the Inglourious campaign different from any other of the studios' use of Twitter or Facebook to promote movies through links, contests, and meet-ups? I don't even recall seeing anything on Twitter about it, other than the normal studios using Twitter to cross-pollinate coverage.

Nicolas Cage told reporters at the Toronto International Film Festival that he decided to drop out of Michel Gondry's adaptation of The Green Hornet because he wasn't satisfied by the way his character, the Green Hornet's nemesis Chudnofsky, was written. According to Cage, the character lacked "humanity" and any sort of background as to why he was a bad guy, and that he "wasn't interested in just being just a straight-up bad guy who was killing people willy-nilly."

It's a bit hard to take Cage's explanation seriously, since he was at the festival to promote his new movie, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, directed by Werner Herzog. As Eugene Novikov wrote in his review of the movie, Cage's character is the self-serious yet off-the-wall type we've come to expect from the actor.

Bad Lieutenant has several of the year's highlights, including a tour de force in which Lieutenant McDonagh stops a pair of youngsters on their way home from a club, confiscates their drugs, snorts them, and has sex with the girl while forcing the guy to watch. (You have to imagine this performed in a full-on Nic Cage-ean fury for the full effect.) He's one bad Lieutenant indeed, though the movie makes clear that he has an honest streak: he'll pocket all the dope he can, but -- unlike his partner, played by Val Kilmer -- he stops short at, say, murdering a drug dealer in "self-defense" to pocket his money.

He also points a gun at a grandmother, smokes crack, and hallucinates an iguana. Let's not forget his tour de force of beating up women in the absolutely unnecessary remake of The Wicker Man. But a comic book character bad guy -- no way!

Instead, Christoph Waltz from Inglourious Basterds will be taking over. Ironically enough, Waltz's ability to bring an eerie humanity to his character Col. Hans Landa (aka the Jew Hunter) won him the Best Actor award at Cannes and has Oscar watchers already placing bets on a Supporting Actor nomination. Although I'll miss Nic Cage's hysterical outbursts in The Green Hornet, chances are good that Waltz will be a better baddie.

When Nicolas Cage stepped down as the villain of Michel Gondry's The Green Hornet, we and others started kicking around names of those actors that we'd most like to see become the bad guy opposite Seth Rogen's masked crime-fighter, and if Deadline Hollywood's Nikki Finke is to be believed -- and for once, I hope that she is -- the vacancy left by Cage will be filled by none other than the AICN-suggested Christoph Waltz.

The 52-year-old Austrian actor is best known for his scene-stealing turn as Col. Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, for which he won the Best Actor award at this year's Cannes Film Festival and for which he's a likely contender for this year's Best Supporting Actor Oscar. That was a villainous performance both fierce and playful, which sounds like just the thing that a Michel Gondry-helmed serial-based action-comedy. (And at this moment, isn't it fitting how much more interesting he and we might find this rumor to be over facts?)

If this is true and the shoot goes according to schedule, we should be looking to see The Green Hornet in theaters around December of 2010.

Starting with a gobsmacked VHS screening of Reservoir Dogs way back in '92, I've seen every Quentin Tarantino movie dozens upon dozens of times, but Inglourious Basterds is the first I will have seen only once before writing about it. Like the absolute best entries cinema history has to offer, his work demands repeat viewing, as much to catch all the in-jokes, references and homages as to see their cumulative, strikingly original impact. All of which is why I can only try to sufficiently deconstruct, classify and characterize Tarantino's latest, a wartime opus whose shortcomings upon first viewing are as immediately recognizable as the fact they will after many more of them prove to be virtues, ultimately creating a singular tribute to WWII movies done in the writer-director's signature, genre-bending style.

While the star of the film is really the story, there are three characters who cement together Inglourious Basterds' unwieldy but surprisingly even-weighted chapters. First, there's Colonel Landa (Christoph Waltz), a Nazi officer who earned the nickname "the Jew hunter" thanks to his indefatigable, shoe-leather-and-shark's-grin persistence. Next, there's Shoshanna (Melanie Laurent), one of Landa's few targets who escaped, who lives under an assumed name and manages a French cinema. And then there's Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), an American soldier who recruits a rabid team of Jews to hunt down Nazis and strike fear with their exploits.

Bastards, bastards, bastards! The best part about Quentin Tarantino appropriating the title for his upcoming movie from Enzo Castellari's high-energy original is that I get to satisfy my inner 11-year-old and tell you all about the latest Inglorious Bastards withour fear of recrimination from parental figures. Diane Kruger is the highest-profile new bastard, according to Variety, joined by Christoph Waltz and writer / actor / comedian Paul Rust.

Kruger, the hellenic beauty who first made a splash on these shores opposite Orlando Bloom in Troy -- which also starred soon to be chief bastard Brad Pitt as a bit of a heel -- will play Bridget Von Hammersmark (not "Hammer Snark," smart guy), a German actress. Kruger is fine casting since, of course, she is a German actress, and already has experience playing WWII theatrics with the flick Joyeaux Noël (Merry Christmas), but I'm sorry that Nastassja Kinski will not be playing the role. She's the kind of 40-something actor that could use a juicy role to remind people of who she is.

Waltz is an unknown quantity to US eyes, though he's done plenty of TV work in Germany. He snared the role of Col Hans Landa, the main Nazi antagonist, the part that Leonard DiCaprio was "in talks" to discuss. If nothing else, Waltz shouldn't have a problem with the accent. Paul Rust has written for Adult Swim's Moral Orel and MTV's Human Giant and appeared in Semi-Pro. Let me go out on a limb and guess that he's been cast -- as the comic relief? I'm sure somebody out there in Commenter Land has read the script and can guess for the rest of us.